In Love With a Wicked Man (37 page)

“Do you?” Kate’s hand had snuck into his.

“The child knows nothing about me, and seems half afraid of me,” he said. “And Mrs. Granger refuses to let me tell Annie about her mother and me, or even tell her who her father is. People whisper behind her back, and the poor child hardly knows why. But she’s twelve, Kate. She’s not stupid. Arrangements must be made. Something must be done.”

“What a mess!” said Kate. “But . . . what sort of arrangements?”

“This.” Edward opened his arms expansively. “That’s what all this was for, Kate.”

“What, Heatherfields?”

“Yes, for Annie,” he said. “I had meant it to be a part of her dowry. A place that might help attract a decent husband when the time comes. Heatherfields, restored to its prime . . . just imagine it, Kate.”

“Yes, a prospective husband might overlook a great deal for such a fine estate,” Kate mused, “and if he were a kind and good man . . .”

“Just so.” Edward fell silent a moment, then sighed again. “There. You know what I know, and good luck making any sense of it. As to Heatherfields . . .”

“Yes?” Kate encouraged.

He carefully considered his words. “I feel oddly reluctant now to part with it,” he said quietly. “I find the neighborhood . . . endearing. There are likely fifty other houses Annie might have. But only one, I fear, where my heart might happily settle.”

“Only one?” asked Kate softly.

Edward considered his next words a long, long while—though he had been considering them, he supposed, for an age now. He considered them so long, the cottage roof collapsed, falling in with a long, horrendous crack, followed by a shooting shower of sparks.

“Only one?” Kate said again. “I am content to sit here, mind you, until you find your answer.”

“Oh,
Kate
,” he said. “Oh, love.”

“Do not
oh, Kate
me,” she said tightly. “I’m the one who nearly died today. I’m the one who must now think of all the things she would have regretted never having done had that asinine Reggie managed to shoot me. Or poison me. Or bore me to death.”

He twisted himself around then, and caught her, drawing her between his legs until she rested back against him. Wrapping his arms around her, he set his chin on her head and together they watched the fire die out.

“You can do better, Kate,” he said warningly.

“Better than what?” she asked lightly, feigning ignorance, he knew, to torment him.

There might be a great many years of such torment ahead of him, he realized—if he were very, very fortunate.

He sighed, and kissed the top of her head. “I’m a man of uncertain bloodlines and dubious character,” he warned her. “My early years were spent bookmaking, calculating odds, and keeping the accounts in Hedge’s hell—”

“Not by your choice,” she interjected.

He laughed. “Keep polishing, but this one won’t shine,” he said. “I spent the last decade bankrupting England’s aristocracy and lining my pockets with their folly. I have not always been honest, but neither have I been dishonest. I am that most disdained of creatures, Kate—a man with a certain moral flexibility. I have kept loose company and looser women. I’m rich as Croesus, and hardly a ha’penny of it was got honestly.”

She sighed. “I know. But I have trouble reconciling all that with your marvelous green eyes and myriad other charms.”

“If I take up residence at Heatherfields, you may avail yourself of my myriad charms at will,” he suggested. “I will pledge them to you, my love, and you alone for all my days.”

“And you think that would not get round,
hmm
?” she said sharply, crooking her head back to glower at him. “That servants do not gossip? That there is some secret passageway to my bedchamber? I assure you, Edward, that there is not. No. I will not do it. I may not be a ravishing beauty or a highly skilled seductress, but I’m holding out for more.”

He gave a bark of laughter, and buried his face in her neck. “Kate, I love you so,” he said. “Do you love me?”

“Desperately, damn you,” she said impatiently. “I confessed as much some days ago.”

“I love it when you curse,” he said, the words muffled against her throat.

“I never did so before,” she said. “I wonder why the tendency has so lately come upon me?”

He laughed again, and let his lips slide down the long, pale turn of her neck. “Kate, my beautiful seductress, I will give up all my wicked ways and quit London and gaming both if—”

“Good,” she interjected. “You should. Wickedness is never rewarded, no matter what Aurélie says.”

He let one hand stray higher, cupping her warm, plump breast. “
Never
rewarded?” he murmured, lightly thumbing her nipple.

“Well . . . almost never,” she said a little breathlessly. “But there. I have interrupted you. I believe you were about to pledge your undying something-or-other.”

“I was about to ask you to be Mrs. Niall Edward Dagenham Quartermaine,” he said, “but then I realized you are Baroness d’Allenay, and will never be Mrs.
anybody
.”

She turned in his embrace. “Does that trouble you?” she asked gently.

He shook his head, but his eyes, he knew, were sad. “Not in the least,” he said honestly. “It only troubles me that you’ll be saddled with all my bad baggage if we marry. Will you do it anyway, my girl? Will you have me for better if I jettison the worst? Society will talk, regardless. Upshaw will likely have an apoplectic fit. Your mother will lose all standing as the family’s most outrageous female. So all in all, my love, I daresay you’d be better served by simply using me for my myriad charms.”

She tightened her grip on his shoulders. “Edward,” she said seriously, “do you
want
to marry me?”

“More than anything,” he said fervently. “More than anything I have ever wanted in the whole of my life.”

“Then I accept your proposal,” she said, setting her lips to his.

And that, as they say, was that.

Drowning in his desire for Kate, Edward kissed her—deeply and possessively, for she was his. And he—heaven help her—was hers. Kate apparently agreed, for her arms left his shoulders and twined around his neck. Then her fingers plunged into his gold-brown hair, and somewhere in that process, Edward forgot he was supposed to be watching a building burn, while Kate forgot all sense of propriety.

And when at last they came apart, their breath coming a little fast and cravats and hairpins in a grave state of disorder, it was to the urgent realization that it might be best, after all, to seize Aurélie, and go straight down to Exeter at week’s end.

“But that,” Kate mused, shoving her last hairpin haphazardly into place, “will scarcely permit you time to shut up things in London.”

“Ah, there is that.” Edward’s hands fell from their task of restoring her bodice to order and began patting over his coat pockets. “But perhaps I shan’t have to.”

He found the letter from Peters that Anstruther had given him some hours earlier, tore it open, his eyes skimming the first sentence.

“Well, congratulate me, my love,” he said, lifting his gaze to hers. “The Quartermaine Club is no more, and we will shortly be several thousand pounds richer.”

Kate’s eyes rounded hugely. “How is this?”

His gaze softened to hers. “I sold it,” he said, “to my second in command. I knew, my dear, that no matter what became of you and me, I had to get out of that business. I knew that, so far as you and I went . . . well, that not even a friendship between us would do if I kept on. I knew what had to be done.”

“My friendship—just my
friendship
—is worth that to you?” she said, blinking her eyes a little rapidly.

He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to the back of it. “Your friendship is
everything
to me, Kate,” he said. “And it is part and parcel to why we are going to have an utterly splendid, utterly happy marriage.”

She preened a little at that, and drew back with eyes that had warmed to a brilliant, glowing silver. “Several
thousand
pounds of ill-got gains!” she said musingly. “That should buy me one incredibly magnificent wedding gift.”

“Which is precisely”—here he paused to kiss the tip of her nose—“what I had in mind.”

“I have always fancied rubies,” she said, “and platinum.”

“
Hmm
,” he said as if considering it. “Might not a sapphire do as well? They are both corundum, you know.”

“Why, I like sapphires very well indeed!” she declared.

“Excellent,” he said. “One appreciates a little flexibility in one’s wife. Now, up with you, Lady d’Allenay. After all, you have a dinner party to host—and perhaps, if you dare risk Upshaw’s apoplexy—an important announcement to make?”

EPILOGUE

The Wentworth Weddings

I
n the end, due to an avalanche of logistical issues, real estate transactions, and family dramas—and despite a vast amount of impatience—Katherine, Baroness d’Allenay, and Mr. Niall Edward Dagenham Quartermaine announced their intent to be married; not immediately, but in late November.

It being widely assumed that wicked Ned Quartermaine had deliberately debauched the poor country mouse—the lady being, after all, a land-rich heiress, and the gentleman no sort of gentleman at all—their scandalous betrothal was immediately the talk of all London.

For all of a fortnight.

Then, most obligingly, the Earl of Brendle’s heir fled to Gretna Green to marry his mother’s allegedly pregnant lady’s maid, only to get himself held up along the Great North Road by the maid’s highwayman of a husband, whereupon the couple held the young lordling for ransom—thus trumping any scandal the Wentworth ladies might stir up.

Lord Upshaw breathed a sigh of relief, and sent the Earl of Brendle his condolences.

Even before the scandal, however, it had been decided the Bellecombe ceremony would be a small, intimate affair in the castle’s private chapel. This seemed a good plan until Kate made the mistake of secretly inviting Isabel, Lady Keltonbrooke.

The starry-eyed bride then compounded this covert act—after pleading, not inaccurately, a general ignorance of her intended’s kith and kin—with a vague and somewhat airy encouragement that Lady Keltonbrooke might bring with her whatever members of Edward’s family as could be persuaded to attend.

Lady Keltonbrooke, having lived long enough in high society to know how to read between the lines, at once laid aside the letter and took up her own pen with a steely look in her eye. She had hardly dipped it in the inkpot, however, when her butler appeared bearing the calling card of Louisa, Lady Upshaw, on a silver tray.

If one doyenne of society is meddlesome, two constitute a coup d’état
.
And then, as the late and little-lamented Alfred Hedge might have said, they were off to the races.

By the time their guest list was finished, the train tickets arranged, the bedchambers aired and the joints laid on to roast, the wedding guests seemed destined to spill into the castle’s inner bailey. Finally, the enterprising Shearns simply drove their hay wagon over to St. Michael’s and began purloining pews, which Tom and Ike then shoved higgledy-piggledy around the chapel’s edges.

The near-farcical logistics of cramming eighty-seven wedding guests cheek-by-jowl into a space meant for forty was exceeded only by the confusion that held forth at the altar. The primary cause of the November delay appeared at the back of the chapel attired in a bridal ensemble of ice-blue tulle and satin purpose-made by the illustrious modiste Madame Odette of rue Saint-Honore, Paris.

In her hair Aurélie Wentworth wore pearls twined with blue forget-me-nots, and on her face she wore the unmistakable, self-satisfied smile of a woman who had finally got her way around a recalcitrant man.

The bride was escorted up the aisle by her upright and saintly brother-in-law, Lord Upshaw, who had been assured by the firm-handed Anstruther that, would the poor man bear but one more scandal in Aurélie’s name, her antics would be put permanently at an end.

After this show of feminine radiance and ruthless determination came something of an anticlimax. Lady d’Allenay, in plain, cream-colored silk, came up the aisle on the arm of her faithful steward. An awkward dance then followed as Anstruther passed Kate off to London’s worst rascal, Ned Quartermaine, then wedged his rather imposing frame around the extra pews to squeeze himself in on his intended bride’s right.

Lord Upshaw simply sat down to mop his bald brow with the fervent prayer that these two would, indeed, be the last of the Wentworth weddings he need ever concern himself with.

And at long last, the Reverend Mr. Richard Burnham—no stranger to scandal himself—was able to say, “
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here . . .”

A
N HOUR LATER,
Kate found herself standing in the middle of Bellecombe’s grand ballroom, one hand resting on her new husband’s arm. “Good heavens, you could be twins!” she murmured, her gaze focused some distance away.

“There is a marked resemblance,” Edward acknowledged, his eyes drifting over their increasingly exuberant crowd of guests.

Due to the presence of Aurélie’s friends, the wedding breakfast was fast becoming a wedding supper, if not something worse. Kate’s attention, however, was focused on the Duke of Dunthorpe.

A restrained, almost grim man, the duke was not quite as tall as his younger brother, nor did he possess that lean, catlike grace which made Edward look so faintly dangerous. But in his hair and in his features and even in the intense green of his eyes, there was not a whit of difference between the two.

Just then, Jasper appeared with a tray of champagne. Edward snared two glasses, then turned with a muted smile to press one into his wife’s hand. She took it, and looked up at him a little pleadingly.

“I do hope you aren’t aggravated with me, Edward,” she said, “for it is only—what?—one very
smallish
aunt, your estranged brother, and a few odd cousins who’ve turned up unexpectedly. Do say again that you’re not angry.”

His smile warmed. “No, my feelings for you, my love, turn in an altogether different direction,” he said suggestively. “I am, however, a little put out at Aunt Isabel, for this was all her doing, she claims, and none of yours.”

“Oh, I daresay,” said his wife vaguely, “but I’m very glad your brother is here.”

The duke chose that moment to leave his aunt’s side and wade through the crowd. And then the awkward moment Edward had dreaded for twenty-odd years was upon him.

The duke bowed to Kate, and thanked her for her hospitality. Then he slowly extended a hand to Edward. “Ned, it is good t-to see you,” he said.

“And you, Freddie,” said Edward with excruciating politeness.

The handshake broke, then a heavy silence fell all around them.

After a moment, Kate cleared her throat. “Well,” she said a little too brightly. “It is lovely to make your acquaintance, Your Grace. Do you make your home in London?”

“No,” said the duke, “very rarely. We live in th-the country, my wife and I. Our children are small, and we pr-prefer a quiet life.”

“Children, how lovely!” Kate murmured, her smile fixed in place. “How many have you, Your Grace, and what are their ages?”

The duke looked vaguely awkward. “We have th-three,” he said, “and another expected any moment. Our Charles is n-nine, Margaret is seven, and our youngest—Edward—is four.”

“Edward,” Kate echoed.

“It is a family name,” Edward interjected a little coolly, “and a common one.”

“Er—yes, we traditionally have an Edward in each generation,” agreed the duke.

He spoke stiffly and with little warmth, Kate noticed—but with the faintest stutter, which might be the cause, she thought, of his formality.

She decided to press her theory. “And what are they like, your children?” she said, determined to keep him talking. “Which is most like you? Which is the smartest, and which is the most mischievous?”

“Edward, I believe, is m-most like me,” said the duke, warming a little. “He is a quiet child. Meg is very like her mother, and a pr-prettily-mannered girl. But Charles is Ned made over; smart
and
mischievous. Up to every rig, Charles is. You m-m-must . . .”

“Must what?” Kate prodded.

A brilliant hue was blooming across the duke’s cheeks. “You m-must c-come and see them,” he said, tripping awkwardly over the words, “if, th-that is, you w-wish, Ned—I beg your pardon—if you can bear it, I mean.” Then he bowed stiffly. “I think Aunt Isabel wants me. I believe I had b-better go.”

Kate’s eyes followed him back through the crowd.

“Well, he’s none too pleased to be here,” said Edward tightly. “I wonder what Isabel threatened him with?”

“I think it is not displeasure,” said Kate pensively. “He stutters. And he seems sad; almost painfully shy, really. Was he so as a boy?”

Edward said nothing for a long moment. “Yes, Freddie was always quiet,” he admitted. “Father used to strop him for stuttering, and tell him he was so hopelessly backward he wasn’t worthy of being a duke.”

“How very tragic,” said Kate, still watching Dunthorpe blush and stammer his way through the crowd. “He did a good deal of damage, your father.”

“Father!” Edward laughed, but without bitterness. “After all these years, I still call him that, and now I have you doing it, too.”

At last Kate turned from the crowd. “I wouldn’t be too sure he
wasn’t
your father,” she said a little grimly.

When Edward opened his mouth to protest, she threw up a hand.

“You don’t know, Edward, nor do I,” she said firmly. “Neither do we care. In fact, it’s just as likely, I daresay, that Alfred Hedge sired the both of you—for if you and Dunthorpe don’t share two parents, I’ll be hanged. Blood runs too true for the pair of you to look so nearly identical.”

“
Hmm
,” said Edward. “I never thought of that.” Then threw back the rest of his champagne. “Aunt Isabel always said the truth would never be known,” he mused. “And do you know what, Kate? You’re right. I do not care.”

“Then you’ve made peace,” she said, “or something near it.”

He set the glass away with a gesture of finality, and circled an arm around Kate’s waist. “Yes, I have,” he said. “But now I think on it, Kate—now I look upon Freddie, and consider back over what his life must have been like—I wonder which of us had the worst of that terrible bargain?”

“He lost his brother,” she said quietly, “and was left alone with a man who sounds like a monster.”

Edward slowly nodded. “He was left under Father’s thumb, I suppose,” he mused, “whilst I was left to raise myself amidst the dregs of society. But neglect gave me a measure of freedom, at least, and I learnt early on that I needn’t be obliged to anyone. That I could live—and prosper—by my wits.”

“There are worse lessons, perhaps, and harder ways to learn them,” said Kate. “Your father was not a kind man. And your brother still seems so painfully awkward, Edward. Perhaps you might go to him and say—well, I do not know. Perhaps you might say to him what you just said to me?”

Edward turned and smiled deep into her eyes. “Tomorrow, perhaps,” he said, leaning very near and dropping his voice huskily. “Today I wish to think only of tonight, and of what you and I will be—”

“De Macey!” Kate’s eyes lit with feigned brilliance. “Look, my love, who is standing just behind you.”

Edward turned just as de Macey circled around him to seize Kate’s hand. “My dear child!” he said with a sweeping, elegant bow. “So very sorry to not have made it back to Bellecombe yesterday. May I say that today, on this most blessed of days, you outshine even your dear mamma in your radiance.”

“Oh, I do not doubt that,” said Kate dryly. “Aurélie is not so much radiant today as she is victorious.”

“Cat-in-the-cream-pot, I’d have said,” murmured Edward. “And poor Anstruther! What a merry dance he shall be led.”

The comte trilled with laughter. “Oh, he long ago learnt the steps to Aurélie’s tune,
mon ami
, but she shall not be leading!” de Macey declared. “Do not grieve for Farmer John; he will have Madame Heartbreaker in traces before the week’s out.”

“Do you think?” asked Kate.

“I do,” said de Macey, smiling wickedly. “It is what she craves, child. Her sort has no respect for a man they can get round with their wiles. Trust me, I should know. She and I—
mon Dieu!
Was ever a pair more ill-suited?”

“Well, you’re a sporting fellow.” Edward clapped a hand to de Macey’s back. “Now tell me, have we settled that other little business?”

De Macey flashed an even more wicked smile, his elegant mustache lightly lifting. “Indeed, just as I promised,” he said silkily. “Lord Reginald Hoke will be shortly arriving in the salubrious isle of Guadeloupe where he will be put to work on my sugar plantation.”

“And he signed the papers without quibbling?” Edward pressed.

“But of course!” De Macey opened his hands expansively. “What choice did he have when I explained to him our offer?”

“What papers?” Kate interjected. “What offer?’

“Oh, my pet, a generous one,” declared the comte. “Your husband offered
not
to have him hung for kidnapping.”

“In exchange for . . . ?”

De Macey laid a hand dramatically over his heart. “In exchange for ten years of pondering his folly, my dear,” he said. “Did I not tell you to trust me to deal with Reggie? He shall spend ten years serving an old friend faithfully. What more could a scorned man ask?”

“Oh, my God,” said Kate quietly. “You
indentured
a nobleman’s son?”

“
Oui
, to me!” said de Macey gleefully. “But as a . . . a . . . How would you say it? A clerk of the accounts? Yes, at long last, Reggie shall learn arithmetic. The dear boy needn’t even sully those lovely hands of his in the field, child; he need only learn self-sufficiency. He has escaped his English creditors by fleeing to French soil, and now he will earn a wage.”

“You’re very kind,” said Kate.

“Alas, I was once something of a fribble myself,” confessed the comte. “But not, I grant you, one foolish enough to game his money away.”

Just then, someone waved at de Macey from across the room. People were beginning to trickle out, Kate realized, though Aurélie was still swanning about the crowd, kissing cheeks and cooing at all her guests. Anstruther and Richard, however, were lingering near the door to either side of Nancy, who—despite a decided glow of happiness in her eyes—looked otherwise wan as they bent attentively toward her.

“Oh, dear,” Kate murmured. “She is feeling not quite the thing again.”

“Indeed, speculation runs rampant,” whispered the comte behind his hand. “The wise and knowing Hetty advises that already the villagers count the months—but not, she adds, with any spite in their hearts.”